It’s a snow day, so we have time for this. dave-from-hvad has heroically chimed on #deflategate already, so I’ll just add this:
I think we’re owed an apology. By a lot of people.
Don’t get me wrong — we shouldn’t worry about billionaire Bob Kraft crying into his pillow over his team’s reputation, or Tom Brady bitterly spitting out his avocado ice cream in a hurt rage. These guys will be all right.
Right now the case against the Patriots rests on 90 seconds where a ball attendant apparently took a pit stop before delivering the balls to the field. #PEEPEEGATE:
The surveillance footage that FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer reported Monday afternoon shows a Patriots’ locker room attendant entering a bathroom with 12 New England footballs and 12 of the Indianapolis Colts’ footballs before the AFC Championship Game, a source told ProFootballTalk Monday night. He stays in the restroom for 90 seconds, then leaves.
Upon this hangs the reputations of Belichick and Brady as cheaters who deserve to have their achievements vacated, who deserve to be banned for the Super Bowl, fired, suspended, fined — hell, imprisoned. Troy Aikman, Mark Brunell, Jackie MacMullen; the Indy Star guy who broke the story, and many others have put forth some variant of this non-sequitir, equally Draconian and incoherent. They extrapolate from a minor but admittedly tantalizing bit of evidence, straight to mischievous intent and guilt. Never mind how trivial the motive; never mind there has never been any hint of a smoking gun. (Perhaps you’re the kind that demands video proof of urine hitting porcelain in that 90 seconds.) As someone once said of Ayn Rand, these folks are the Evel Knievels of leaping to conclusions.
Perhaps even worse are those in the media who have propounded something along the lines of “well, it doesn’t matter if they’re guilty; the damage to the Patriots’ reputation is done.” As if those scribes and radio hosts had nothing to do with that! As if the constant conjecture and innuendo wasn’t causing that damage!
The rush to judgment has been worthy of McCarthy-era literary classics. In a way, it’s fortunate that the victims of this witch hunt are incredibly wealthy, powerful, popular people, with a loyal following and a huge media megaphone at their disposal. Imagine how this kind of thing goes for those who don’t have the money or standing to defend their reputations.
And with that, I want an absolute decimation in the Super Bowl. I want a U Mad Bro Tom Brady. I want a tricksy, spiteful Belichick. I want a full Gronking. Pats 62-3.
jconway says
Two different families decked out in Pats gear were in front of me in the line in Costco, that’s right, the line out here in Illinois. Saw a bunch of Pats hats on the way to work this morning coming out of Union Station. Screw the haters, there is a veritable Pats Nation out there and we are hungry for another championship. And it looks like the boys in blue are ready to give us one.
slapNtickle says
As a BMGer and a non-Pats fan, I gotta say I’m suspicious. I get everyone superceded the Sox as everyone’s favorite Boston team, but to me they behave an awful lot like investment bankers. It’s always “Oooh well we didn’t cheat, we just got caught breaking the same rules that everyone else does. It’s not even illegal!”
The simple fact of the matter is, two separate articles on Slate outline where the Pats and their plays-per-fumble ratio sits. Pre-2007 they were right in the pack with all the other non-dome teams.
However, since the 2007 rule change (that Peyton Manning was all about too) that allows teams to always supply their own balls (where previously all the balls were supplied by the home team) the Pats numbers are simply off the charts. They fumble half as often as the next closest team. Players that were on the Pats had low fumble totals and then left and their fumble totals returned to normal.
This Slate article breaks down pretty clearly that something very fishy is up.
Obviously all of this press is overblown, and not even Touchdown Jesus himself could have saved the Colts last week. But having said that, the Pats follow the rules the way the banks followed the rules, and to act like they’re the class of the NFL instead of its Goldman Sachs is just bullshit.
stomv says
1. You question the mighty Pats! This reality based community does tend to come off the rails when it comes to parochial sports, so good for you.
2. The fumble analysis is bogus. It’s really bad. Know how I knew it would be bad? Anytime you see a study that groups years together and shows an outlier, the first question you ask is: why those years? In this case, it was a 5 year average. So I looked up the Pats fumbles by year:
2010 9 fumbles
2011 15
2012 14
2013 27
2014 16
So, what have we learned? The first thing is that by going back 5 years, they’ve included an insanely low fumble count. Had they used the last 2 years of data, for example, the Pats are way worse (16.2 per season vs. 21.5 per season). The second thing is this: the Pats were really good for each of the past five years. Good teams fumble less. By selecting a time period when one team is really good but when most other teams had both good and bad years, you exaggerate the statistic — good teams fumble less, and over the past five years the Pats were good each year. Therefore, they’re an outlier because, well, their overall performance was also an outlier.
A proper fumble analysis wouldn’t aggregate years (you’d do each year separately), and would discount plays where there wasn’t an inbound collision with the ball carrier (ie eliminate incomplete passes, feet-first-slides, and OOB plays). It would also control for indoors and outdoors of course, and perhaps also for temperature. You’d still find that the Pats don’t fumble very often, but their advantage over the other teams wouldn’t appear to be so remarkable, because, frankly, it’s not so remarkable.
The Pats got caught cheating with video. They got caught with underinflated balls that they’re responsible for providing. They’re getting caught bending and breaking rules. In that way, your connecting them to the behavior of the bankers is pretty clever.
It’s not about fumbles though, and frankly, the NFL has an easy fix. Just have the NFL provide the footballs. Easy enough.
dave-from-hvad says
who I thought was the supposed beneficiary of the under-inflated footballs. Yet, the Slate article breathlessly notes that Brady and Manning had pushed for the rules change in 2007 that allowed the team to use its own balls. Great analysis all around!
sabutai says
Brady and Manning pushed to change quite logically. Beforehand, the home team supplied the balls to both teams — even more room for underhandedness really. It’s not as if this was some plot by Tom to undermine fair play — it just equalized the playing field.
kirth says
Also, famous Science-persons Niel DeGrasse-Tyson and Bill Nye apparently fumbled the temperature-deflation question by confusing gauge pressure and absolute pressure when making their calculations. Belicheck was right that the change from locker-room temp to field temp would account for the underpressure condition.
jconway says
And lovingly, since like me, he is both a Pats and NTD fan. But his article was pretty good.
His block & tackle series in general has been quite funny.
Even if we were guilty, I am with Louis CK.
kirth says
As included in an update to Teti’s article.
This is entirely possible, since the air that comes out of a pump is going to be warmer than the ambient air surrounding the pump. You’ll know this if you’ve ever used a hand-pump to inflate a bicycle tire. Those pumps get hot, and the air coming out of them is also warmed up.
sabutai says
…it’s like pine tar on the baseball bats. The refs are doing dozens of things in readying for the game, and they quickly glance at the balls. Sure some just on the edge, but it’s a playoff game. Maybe the gauge is off. So we just get it done quickly. Then someone actually measures closely and all hell breaks lose.
Peter Porcupine says
Check out this link from SI about the league official in charge of this:
http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/01/26/nfl-mike-kensil-deflategate
Kensil was the Jets’ Director of Operations when Belichick quit the team to go to New England – leaving quite a hole behind.